Small ERP vendors again beat the big ones

ERP Satisfaction 2010/2011

More than 2,000 participants of the ERP satisfaction survey Germany 2010/2011 agree: Good service combined with flexibility, feasibility and user friendliness are trumps - and they are mostly in the hands of smaller vendors and/or ERP vendors specialising on specific industries.

For the fifth time, ERP users were given the opportunity to appraise their ERP software and their ERP vendor within the ERP Satisfaction Survey Germany. More than 2.000 ERP users took part and drew up a tangible image of ERP reality in German companies.

ERP Vendors 2010: Winners and losers

The ERP vendors who reached very high satisfaction grades mostly cultivate a very open and intensive communication with their customers. A further advantage of these ERP vendors is that system development, integration or implementation and partly even support during operation are literally one-stop amenities. In the ideal case, the ERP vendor even supplies a solution which matches the user's business processes like a glove. This combination can be found with solutions which are clearly focused on specific target groups, e.g. work ... for all!, MAJESTY, XTrade or WinWeb-Food.

But also middle-sized ERP vendors with a broader scope manage to convince their customers with a successful combination of good service and matching software. Here, solutions like FEPA, MegaPlus, FibuNet or GODYO P/4 can be found. After considerable improvement, oxaion could close the gap to this group. Within the category of solutions for bigger companies, it is again SAP (R/3 resp. SAP ERP) which performs above average. Lawson M3 (formerly Movex) improved its position to the midrange where Infor ERP LN can also be found. A weaker performance can be observed for solutions whose future has been publicly discussed or whose project and operational support has decreased because of capacity bottlenecks.

User Satisfaction - Points of Critique and Trends

The main points of critique with reference to ERP vendors and systems are:

system-related aspects like "forms and analyses", "interface connectability", "ergonomics" and the deficient "release-ability" of the ERP software,

classic project parameters like „adherence to budget", „adherence to schedule" und „necessary personnel expenses" as well as

support services like „training and informational offer" and „support during updates / release changes".

Compared to the survey results of 2008, however, often criticised weak points like "forms and analyses" or "software's flexibility and adaptability" show perceptible improvement when it comes to satisfaction with the ERP vendor resp. software. It seems, that ERP vendors try to increase their ERP solutions' flexibility - a trend which was already noticeable in 2008.